Advances in genetic technology will enable us to intervene in human biological development to prevent and cure diseases, to restore individuals' functions and capacities back to a normal level after injury and even to enhance them beyond what has hitherto been considered as normal functioning for our species. Such a power to reshape and modify the human condition raises fundamental questions that touch upon the central core of morality. One of these questions is distributive justice. Will all people have equal (...) access to the beneficial effects of genetic technology in general and medical genetics in particular? Most of the new therapeutic and enhancement techniques will probably be quite expensive. That means that, probably during a long period of time after the new genetic technology enters medical practice, its use will be practically monopolized by the rich, to the detriment of all those who are not in a position to afford genetic treatments. In this paper, I argue that the health care inequality that inevitably will follow from the adoption of genetic technology, while posing a challenge to provide as long as possible for genetic interventions for all, is hardly a reason to reject the new technology. In that case, we would have to reject any new medicine or medical technique that cannot be made available to all people at once. Finally, I also argue that the ?enhanced new world? that would follow the introduction of genetic technology, even with the kind of inequality that might then arise, poses no serious threat either to elite sports or to society and should therefore be welcome. (shrink)

Although recent work has been done on the Barnes Foundation and its philosophical and pedagogical background, almost all the research effort has been focused on the friendship and intellectual link between John Dewey and Albert C. Barnes. Unfortunately, to the best of our knowledge, the impact of George Santayana’s philosophy on the Foundation has not been systematically examined. The hypothesis that we present and develop in this article is that Santayana’s thought is essential for the aesthetic theories elaborated within the (...) framework of the Barnes Foundation: Barnes’ theory of art criticism; Dewey’s aesthetic theory, and even Lawerence Buermeyer’s aesthetic theory. This article is a first approximation with the purpose of clarifying these philosophical, theoretical and historical relationship so as to start to fill the existing gap in contemporary literature on the topic. (shrink)

El propósito del presente trabajo es ofrecer una contextualización de “Las implicancias del pragmatismo para la educación”, que traducimos en este número de la revista. El artículo está compuesto de tres partes que John Dewey escribe en diciembre de 1908, febrero y marzo de 1909. Nuestra hipótesis interpretativa es que este texto es fundamental en dos sentidos: en primer lugar, para entender los lazos de Dewey con la tradición pragmatista; en segundo lugar, para comprender su conceptualización del vínculo entre pragmatismo (...) y educación. (shrink)

For elite athletes seeking a winning advantage, manipulation of their own genetic code has become a realistic possibility. In Genetic Technology and Sport, experts from sports science, genetics, philosophy, ethics, and international sports administration describe the potential applications of the new technology and debate the questions surrounding its use.

Professionalism and widespread sponsorship brought about for athletes the prospect of getting considerable rewards for their efforts. This, no doubt, puts them under great temptations. Illicit short cuts to victory, though obviously not providing excellence in a sport discipline, might nonetheless secure economic benefits as well as fame and respect, at least as long as the unfair strategy for victory is not uncovered. Doping is one of those short cuts. To many people, this indicates that the current development that professional, (...) elite sport is undergoing is unsound. In this article I will try to answer to this criticism sustaining that the doping ban is unjustified and should therefore be lifted. (shrink)

Recent developments within genetics are encouraging. Many ill people have already been treated with genetic therapy with positive results and virtually no negative side effects. Parallel to this positive prospect, worries have been expressed about the possible application of the new medical techniques for enhancement purposes. The use of genetic technology in the world of sports has been conceived of as especially problematic, since in some cases it might violate the present ban on gene doping. Gene therapy may be applied (...) to re‐engineer a sportperson's body thereby enhancing athletic performance. This chapter presents a brief account of current discussion on the enhancement of human physical capacities, particularly in (elite) sports. First the natural scientific picture is described, followed by a discussion of the ethical implications of enhancement technologies. (shrink)

Much has been written about recidivist punishments, particularly within the area of criminology. However there is a notorious lack of penal philosophical reflection on this issue. This book attempts to fill that gap by presenting the philosopher’s view on this matter as a way of furthering the debate on recidivist punishments.

In this article I pursue two aims. First I advance an internal critique of hard-core retribution as it is usually advanced by victims of human rights violations. The focus of this penal approach on submitting all the military personnel guilty of human rights violations to harsh punishments risks jeopardizing the (clearly retributive) demand of punishing all those involved in the abuses. Particularly when extensive time has elapsed after the misdeeds, the most rational policy seems to be a negotiation model that (...) offers gross human rights abusers punishment reductions in exchange for valuable information about the facts. Defending such a penal negotiation model constitutes the second aim of this article. I conclude that in order to satisfy the (hard-core) retributive demand of punishing all those (both military and civilian) guilty of human rights abuses, it is required not to submit all military personal indicted to retributive punishments. (shrink)

Much has been written about recidivist punishments, particularly within the area of criminology. However there is a notorious lack of penal philosophical reflection on this issue. This book attempts to fill that gap by presenting the philosopher’s view on this matter as a way of furthering the debate on recidivist punishments.

According to estimates more than 400 biobanks currently operate across Europe. The term ‘biobank’ indicates a specific field of genetic study that has quietly developed without any significant critical reflection across European societies. Although scientists now routinely use this phrase, the wider public is still confused when the word ‘bank’ is being connected with the collection of their biological samples. There is a striking lack of knowledge of this field. In the recent Eurobarometer survey it was demonstrated that even in (...) 2010 two-thirds of the respondents had never even heard about biobanks. The term gives the impression that a systematic collection of biological samples can constitute a ‘bank’ of considerable financial worth, where the biological samples, which are insignificant in isolation but are valuable as a collection, can be preserved, analysed and put to ‘profitable use’. By studying the practices of the numerous already existing biobanks, the authors address the following questions: to what extent does the term ‘biobank’ reflect the normative concept of using biological samples for the purposes of biomedical research? Furthermore, is it in harmony with the so far agreed legal–ethical consensus in Europe or does it deliberately pull science to the territory of a new, ambiguous commercial field? In other words, do biobanks constitute a medico-legal fiction or are they substantively different from other biomedical research protocols on human tissues? (shrink)

Traditionally the doping debate has been dominated by those who want to see doping forbidden (the prohibitionist view) and those who want to see it permitted (the ban abolitionist view). In this article, the authors analyse a third position starting from the assertion that doping use is a symptom of the paradigm of highly competitive elite sports, in the same way as addictions reflect current social paradigms in wider society. Based upon a conceptual distinction between occasional use, habitual use and (...) addiction, and focusing on the physical and/or mental dependency caused by the addictive use of a certain drug, we argue that marihuana, stimulants and anabolic steroid abuse—the most frequently detected substances in doping tests—satisfies at least one, often both, of these conditions. A conclusion to be drawn from the authors' arguments is that the prohibitionist view is inappropriate for dealing with doping, as the severe sanctions attached to it will cut the doper off her/his social and professional environment, thereby risking reinforcing her/his addictive conduct. But the ban abolitionist view seems inappropriate as well. At first sight, it seems neither rational nor humane not to intervene when confronted with conduct which is highly harmful for the individual and upon which she has reduced or no control whatsoever. Instead the authors' proposal will be to contextualise dopers' conduct within sport healthcare and see it strictly in relation to each athlete's personal background. Developing preventive programmes—implemented through person-tailored counselling and eventually treatment, rather than severe sanctions or the mere lifting of the ban—seems to be a more reasonable, and probably more efficient, way of conducting ‘the war against doping’. (shrink)

El artículo presenta una reflexión sobre la manera en que en los últimos veinte años la promoción de un determinado tipo de solidaridad en Chile ha contribuido a la conformación de una gubernamentalidad liberal avanzada, necesaria para la instalación de un programa neoliberal. La reflexión se enmarca en los aportes teóricos de Michel Foucault y tiene por objeto empírico piezas de publicidad de promoción de la solidaridad emitidas en Chile entre los años 2009 y 2010, que han sido analizadas en (...) el contexto del proyecto Fondecyt 1090534. Se presentan tres tipos de resultados: (a) se describen los sectores sociales que se construyen como agentes de la solidaridad, (b) se reflexiona sobre las prácticas solidarias más promovidas y (c) se indaga en la forma en que se interpela a los sujetos a ser solidarios. (shrink)

The zone of latent solutions hypothesis provides an alternative approach to explaining cultural patterns in primates and many other animals. According to the ZLS hypothesis, non-human great ape cultures consist largely or solely of latent solutions. The current competing hypothesis for ape culture argues instead that at least some of their behavioural or artefact forms are copied through specific social learning mechanisms and that their forms may depend on copying. In contrast, the ape ZLS hypothesis does not require these forms (...) to be copied. Instead, it suggests that several social learning mechanisms help determine the frequency of these behaviours and artefacts within connected individuals. The ZLS hypothesis thus suggests that increases and stabilisations of a particular behaviour’s or artefact’s frequency can derive from socially-mediated form reinnovations. Therefore, and while genes and ecology play important roles as well, according to the ape ZLS hypothesis, apes typically acquire the forms of their behaviours and artefacts individually, but are usually socially induced to do so. The ZLS approach is often criticized—perhaps also because it challenges the current null hypothesis, which instead assumes a requirement of form-copying social learning mechanisms to explain many ape behavioural forms. However, as the ZLS hypothesis is a new approach, with less accumulated literature compared to the current null hypothesis, some confusion is to be expected. Here, we clarify the ZLS approach—also in relation to other competing hypotheses—and address misconceptions and objections. We believe that these clarifications will provide researchers with a coherent theoretical approach and an experimental methodology to examine the necessity of form-copying variants of social learning in apes, humans and other species. (shrink)

Embracing an inter-disciplinary approach grounded on Gärdenfors’ theory of conceptual spaces, we introduce a formal framework to analyse and compare selected theories about technical artefacts present in the literature. Our focus is on design-oriented approaches where both designing and manufacturing activities play a crucial role. Intentional theories, like Kroes’ dual nature thesis, are able to solve disparate problems concerning artefacts but they face both the philosophical challenge of clarifying the ontological nature of intentional properties, and the empirical challenge of testing (...) the attribution of such intentional properties to artefacts. To avoid these issues, we propose an approach that, by identifying different modalities to characterise artefact types, does not commit to intentional qualities and is able to empirically ground compliance tests. (shrink)

Mechanistic models are built using knowledge as the primary information source, with well-established biological and physical laws determining the causal relationships within the model. Once the causal structure of the model is determined, parameters must be defined in order to accurately reproduce relevant data. Determining parameters and their values is particularly challenging in the case of models of pathophysiology, for which data for calibration is sparse. Multiple data sources might be required, and data may not be in a uniform or (...) desirable format. We describe a calibration strategy to address the challenges of scarcity and heterogeneity of calibration data. Our strategy focuses on parameters whose initial values cannot be easily derived from the literature, and our goal is to determine the values of these parameters via calibration with constraints set by relevant data. When combined with a covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy, this step-by-step approach can be applied to a wide range of biological models. We describe a stepwise, integrative and iterative approach to multiscale mechanistic model calibration, and provide an example of calibrating a pathophysiological lung adenocarcinoma model. Using the approach described here we illustrate the successful calibration of a complex knowledge-based mechanistic model using only the limited heterogeneous datasets publicly available in the literature. (shrink)

Super-substantivalism (of the type we’ll consider) roughly comprises two core tenets: (1) the physical properties which we attribute to matter (e.g. charge or mass) can be attributed to spacetime directly, with no need for matter as an extraneous carrier “on top of” spacetime; (2) spacetime is more fundamental than (ontologically prior to) matter. In the present paper, we revisit a recent argument in favour of super-substantivalism, based on General Relativity. A critique is offered that highlights the difference between (various accounts (...) of) fundamentality and (various forms of) ontological dependence. This affords a metaphysically more perspicuous view of what super-substantivalism’s tenets actually assert, and how it may be defended. We tentatively propose a re-formulation of the original argument that not only seems to apply to all classical physics, but also chimes with a standard interpretation of spacetime theories in the philosophy of physics. (shrink)

Moral disengagement is the process by which individuals mitigate the consequences of their own violations of moral standards. Although MD is understood to be co-determined by culture norms, no study has yet explored the extent to which MD applied to safety at work fosters safety violations, nor the role of organizational culture as a predictor of JS-MD. The current study seeks to address this gap in the literature by examining individual- and organizational-level factors that explain why employees fail to report (...) workplace accidents. We tested a latent variable structural model positing organizational culture typologies as predictors of JS-MD, which in turn is expected to mediate the relationship with accident underreporting. Using data from 1033 employees in 28 Italian organizations, findings suggest that bureaucratic safety culture was related to lower levels of JS-MD, whereas technocratic safety culture was related to greater JS-MD. In turn, JS-MD positively predicted employee accident underreporting and fully mediated the relationship between culture and underreporting. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in light of the increasing focus on underreporting as well as the adverse individual and organizational consequences of failing to report workplace accidents. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to examine individual and organizational antecedents and consequences of safety-related moral disengagement. Using Conservation of Resources theory, social exchange theory, and psychological contract breach as a theoretical foundation, this study tested the proposition that higher job insecurity is associated with greater levels of subsequent safety-related moral disengagement, which in turn is related to reduced safety performance. Moreover, we examined whether perceived organizational and supervisor support buffered or intensified the impact of job insecurity on moral (...) disengagement. Using a two-wave lagged design, anonymous survey data collected from N = 389 working adults in the U.S. supported the hypothesized moderated mediation model. Specifically, the conditional indirect effects of job insecurity on safety performance via moral disengagement were intensified as levels of perceived organizational and supervisor support increased. These results suggest that the threat of job insecurity may prompt employee moral disengagement; this effect is even stronger among employees who perceived higher levels of organizational and supervisor support. We interpret these counterintuitive findings in light of increasingly insecure contemporary work arrangements and how these may give rise to potentially unethical safety-related decision making and behavior. (shrink)

We present a preliminary high-level formal theory, grounded on knowledge representation techniques and foundational ontologies, for the uniform and integrated representation of the different kinds of (quali- tative and quantitative) knowledge involved in the designing process. We discuss the conceptual nature of engineering design by individuating and analyzing the involved notions. These notions are then formally charac- terized by extending the DOLCE foundational ontology. Our ultimate purpose is twofold: (i) to contribute to foundational issues of design; and (ii) to support (...) the development of advanced modelling systems for (qualitative and quantitative) representation of design knowledge. (shrink)

Product structures are represented in engineering models by depicting and linking components, features and assemblies. Their understanding requires knowledge of both design and manufacturing practices, and yet further contextual reasoning is needed to read them correctly. Since these representations are essen- tial to the engineering activities, the lack of a clear and explicit semantics of these models hampers the use of information systems for their assessment and exploita- tion. We study this problem by identifying different interpretations of structure rep- resentations, (...) and then discuss the formal properties that a suitable language needs for representing components, features and combinations of these. We show that the representation of components and features require a non-standard mereology. (shrink)

The collection presents a variety of promising new directions in Royce scholarship from an international group of scholars, including historical reinterpretations, explorations of Royce's ethics of loyalty and religious philosophy, and contemporary applications of his ideas in psychology, the problem of reference, neo-pragmatism, and literary aesthetics.

dolce, the first top-level ontology to be axiomatized, has remained stable for twenty years and today is broadly used in a variety of domains. dolce is inspired by cognitive and linguistic considerations and aims to model a commonsense view of reality, like the one human beings exploit in everyday life in areas as diverse as socio-technical systems, manufacturing, financial transactions and cultural heritage. dolce clearly lists the ontological choices it is based upon, relies on philosophical principles, is richly formalized, and (...) is built according to well-established ontological methodologies, e.g. OntoClean. Because of these features, it has inspired most of the existing top-level ontologies and has been used to develop or improve standards and public domain resources. Being a foundational ontology, dolce is not directly concerned with domain knowledge. Its purpose is to provide the general categories and relations needed to give a coherent view of reality, to integrate domain knowledge, and to mediate across domains. In these 20 years dolce has shown that applied ontologies can be stable and that interoperability across reference and domain ontologies is a reality. This paper briefly introduces the ontology and shows how to use it on a few modeling cases. (shrink)

Delusion is one of the most intriguing psychopathological phenomena and its conceptualization remains the subject of genuine debate. Claims that it is ill-defined, however, are typically grounded on essentialist expectations that a given definition should capture the core of every instance acknowledged as delusion in the clinical setting.